August 30, 2012

Since this weekend happens to be a holiday weekend where I get 3 days off, I'm planning on making the most of it. In doing so, my boyfriend and I are going to make the 2 hour trek up to IKEA to pick up (and look at) a few things!

We don't really need a dining table right now but with holidays right around the corner, I figured now is as good of a time as any to buy it! Plus, buying it now means we'll have plenty of time to put it together, find some chairs for it (that don't cost $1,000...) and get it set up in time for the first year of holiday dinners at our new house!

August 28, 2012

Our guest bathroom's curtain rod has been updated! Click here to see how it currently looks!

After this happened:

Three times:

I figured it was time to replace the builder basic shower curtain rod in our guest bathroom. Rather than buying one, I decided to DIY one since the rod I wanted isn't what you'd typically find in a big box store.

August 27, 2012

After I gave up on our building our own dining room table, I started to think about other options. I visited a couple of local stores and saw some tables I liked but they were all way out of my budget at $1,500+ each. One store was having a 50% off everything sale which brought the tables down to $750 but that still seemed like too much so I passed and continued looking.

I tried searching Craigslist but 8 foot tables are hard to come by on there and my local Goodwill's stock of furniture has been low lately so they didn't have anything either. Having struck out locally, I decided to do a little online window shopping and that's where I found IKEA's Bjursta dining table:

The table isn't new but somehow I overlooked it before. It comes with two leaves and when they're in place, the table extends to seat 6-10 people. The best part? It's only $300! I like the brown option the most since it's similar to the stain I was going to use on the table we were building. I think it'll fit in with how I was originally planning on decorating the dining room so I'm excited :)

August 24, 2012

Maybe disaster isn't the right word but remember on Monday how I said I wanted to show you the finished dining room table we were in the process of building? Well, it's still sitting in our garage unfinished. It's not that I didn't have time to finish it (I did), it's just that I gave up on it :(

After we attached the hardware and stood it up to see if it would stand, I started noticing some problems. I tried to look past them and gave myself a day to figure out a solution but after thinking about it I realized that my heart wasn't in the project any more and it seemed silly to spend more time (and money) on something that I don't like.

The table has potential to be great but not for a perfectionist like me. The "X" legs we made aren't wide enough so the top isn't in proportion to them which makes it look like it's too big/wide:

The top boards are wavy and uneven:

The board on the far right bends down even though we ran some Liquid Nails between the two boards and jammed another board up under it to hold it in place overnight:

There's a gap between side edges of the apron (above) as well as the top of the table and the apron (the piece with the hardware):

I applied some stain to the tabletop last night to see what it would look like and it looks nice, but not nice enough to change my mind:

Sigh, I'm so disappointed. I really wanted this to work and if I wasn't so picky, I'm sure it would. I feel so bad for wasting my boyfriends time. He says we can use it as a work table in the garage and set our saw up on it so at least the time and effort we put into building it will kind of pay off. I'm also thinking of repurposing the hardware on something else but we'll see.

I thought this would be easy and even though I had drawn up some detailed plans, I'm clearly not cut out to build furniture haha Looks like I'll be sticking to simple DIY projects from now on!

August 22, 2012

Even though I'm second guessing my plans and doubting my DIY abilities, work is still continuing on our dining room table. However, since I don't have much to show you, let's turn our attention back towards our living room.

Last week I showed you some of the small updates we made:

The changes we made aren't groundbreaking (or that impressive, to be honest haha) but we do have plans to add additional finishing touches in the future...

August 20, 2012

If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw a few sneak peeks of the progress we made on our table over the weekend.

We finished building the second "X" leg Saturday night:

Then on Sunday afternoon, I started to attach the hardware to make sure the legs would support the weight of the top of the table:

When my boyfriend got home from work, we flipped the table over and stood it on its legs to see what would happen and ... it held! You guys - we built a freakin' table! :D

We left the table standing on its legs overnight to see if it would break, bow, bend, etc. but so far, so good! If it's still standing when I get home tonight, we're going to flip the table over, remove all of the hardware, patch the remaining screw holes/gaps, and sand everything down.

We're much further behind than I thought we'd be but if we can get all of the above done tonight, hopefully I can start staining the table Tuesday night and polying Wednesday night. I'm really hoping I can share the finished table with you on Friday so keep your fingers crossed for me!

What'd you get done this weekend? Am I the only one who falls behind on projects? One minute I'm ahead of the game and the next I'm 20 steps behind!

August 15, 2012

Not only for the fact that this post has gone live twice now (!!!) without any photos (blame it on me pre-scheduling it to post but staying up too late working on our dining room table to edit the photos for it and then never changing the schedule date haha) but ever since we moved in, our living room has looked like this (apologies for the bad lighting):

I painted the top, front, and sides with the same white paint (Olympic One Primer + Paint in One) that I used to paint the top of my dresser turned entertainment center and I painted the drawer fronts with the same Indigo Streamer navy blue paint that I used on my console table makeover. I used Brasso to shine up the hardware and styled the top with items I had lying around.

I started the makeover by cleaning the entire dresser twice with some Method cleaner and then once more with some Goo Gone (it was so dirty and randomly sticky ... gross!).

August 10, 2012

Happy 200th post to me! Man, I talk a lot haha Thank you to everyone who's ever read or commented on a post of mine! Here's to (at least) 200 more! :)
This weekend I plan on doing the following:

1. Updating our living room

We finally laid down the Nate Berkus rug I bought back in December (!!!) and layered a cowhide rug I bought at a Gem Show (back in January...) on top of it but that's about all we've done haha Judging by how long it's taken us to finally put the rugs down, you may not see much more of the room until April ;)

2. Continuing to work on our dining room table

We finished building the top of the table last night but it's sooo heavy that we can't even lift it off the ground! We also need to by some more hardware to help brace the two top edge pieces so they don't bend/bow as much.

I'm hoping we can cut and assemble the legs tonight so we can start sanding everything down on Saturday morning/afternoon and prep it for staining. I'll be a happy camper if we can start staining the table Saturday night/Sunday morning :)

I've removed all of the hardware and have given the entire dresser a good cleaning but that's as far as I've gotten. I'd like to Brasso the hardware, fill all of the dings and dents with wood filler, and sand everything down (might as well sand it when I'm sanding the dining table!) by Saturday afternoon so I can start priming/painting that evening but we'll see what happens! I'm still trying to hunt down the missing piece of hardware along with a new leg so hopefully I can find something soon.

What do you have planned for the weekend? Any furniture building/makeovers on deck?

August 8, 2012

When our house was being built and the lighting fixtures started going in, I knew they were going to be on the top of my list of things to replace. The #1 fixture(s) that needed to go? The two pendants that hung over our breakfast bar in the kitchen:

There's nothing wrong with them, they just aren't my style and they're a little smaller than what I had in mind. I lived with them for the past two months while I searched for some alternative options.

August 1, 2012

It's our second monthiversary at the new house! The past 60 days have flown by and while our house is still very much a work in progress, I've checked more off my list this month that I did last month.